Intermodality

Some days, the transit debate feels like a battle of extremes. On one side are people who want no transit at all. On the other side are people who always want more. This post is a challenge to the latter.
METRO is proposing to spend $1.2 billion — roughly half local funding and half federal funding [...]

On Monday, construction crews in California slowly lowered a 1.4 million pound section of bridge onto a barge destined for a scrapyard:

(San Francisco Chronicle)
Appropriately, it was the reverse of an operation performed almost 80 years earlier:

(Derleth Collection, Water Resources Center Archives, UC Berkeley)
The Carquinez Bridge was doomed by its own success. It was opened in [...]

The Harrisburg/East End line shares a distinction with the Universities Line: it’s one of only two LRT/BRT lines in the 2012 METRO Solutions Phase II plan that hasn’t been the subject of an Alternatives Analysis study. But otherwise, the two corridors are very different. The Harrisburg line connects neighborhoods but not activity centers, so the [...]

The rail thing

Recently, I’ve been seeing advertising everywhere for Fall Creek, the giant planned community up on Beltway 8 and Highway 59. There was an insert in the Houston Press, a flyer in the mail, and even a billboard next to my own condo (above).
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the “15 minute” number is a lie; [...]

(Dan Havel and Dean Ruck’s Inversion, a temporary installation at Art League Houston last summer. It has nothing to do with rail, but it’s one of many reasons I love Neartown. And I do think it is about process.)
John Culberson’s town hall meeting at Rice University last night was a grueling affair that stretched out [...]

At last night’s town hall meeting, John Culberson and others said many times that METRO clearly said that the rail line would be on Westpark, not Richmond. I posted about this earlier this week. But there’s another version of that claim that deserves some comment. I’ve heard over and over again that METRO’s map clearly [...]

METRO’s proposed Northern Intermodal Center sparked a flurry of discussion (also this post, this post, Houston Strategies, and Off the Kuff) back in January, but that was based mainly on speculation. Thanks to the public meeting last week, we have better information now.
We still don’t have the answers to some big questions. What will be [...]

There’s an odd claim in the Chronicle this morning:
“Metro does not have the right to study or evaluate Richmond,” Seger said, “because in 2003 the voters of Houston decided it would be on Westpark.”
First of all, while there is a City of Houston charter provision (see this pdf, section 21) that the city may not [...]

Three public meetings this week:
A public meeting on the Intermodal Center (this one, not this one):

Northern Intermodal
Tuesday, April 4, 6:30 p.m.
Ketelsen Elementary 600 Quitman

More meeting info here and a factsheet here.
Two public meetings on the Universities line:

Wednesday, April 5, 6:30
Poe Elementary School
5100 Hazard St.

Thursday, April 6, 6:30
West University Church of Christ
3407 Bissonnet

There are a whole [...]

This post was posted on April 1. Read it with that in mind.